In all the years I've known you, maybe 28,
I've never seen you so exercised as you are these days — practically rabid,
foaming at the mouth. Your Saturday column, "Global Doormat," which I saw in
the New York Post, is just short of hysterical about the doom that
will soon befall the Republic because we refuse to strong-arm the world into
doing your bidding. Listen to yourself: "Yet something even deeper than the
supine character of our president is amiss. It is that U.S. foreign policy is
being made today not with U.S. interests foremost in mind but to advance some
gauzy vision of a world of friendly nations, all happily trading in peace and
harmony."

It always is useful to have a loud, clear voice to remind us
about our national security interests, but the United States today is more
obviously at peace than at any time in the last 80 years. Our national
interest, first and foremost, should be to advance the vision of a world of
friendly nations, all happily trading in peace and harmony. Why not? The only
way you can make the case that China is a military threat is by the ridiculous
kind of exaggeration Michael Kagan of The Weekly Standard asks us to
take seriously — multiplying their known military expenditures by a factor
often (which still doesn't get it close to our defense spending, certainly not
within shouting distance of the West). On the Fox Sunday show with Tony Snow,
you contested with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, who was
being generous in making the point that it will be 10 or 15 years at China's
current rate of increased military spending before they might pose a threat,
and that is if we stand still, waiting for them.

Your fallback argument
about how we are financing their military buildup is backwards, as I have been
trying to explain to you for the last year. I'm disappointed that neither Tony
Snow nor Henry the K called you on it, as I believe they both know the giant
hole in your argument about their trade surplus with the United States. China
has been a net exporter of capital for the last several years, which is how
you define a trade surplus on current account. How do you think they acquired
$130 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds? They send us capital and we give them
bonds. As long as you continue to ignore this simple truth, which demand-side
economists and supply-side economists and upside-down economists agree upon,
your argument has the same obvious validity that the moon is made of green
cheese. In the 1950s, when Japan was running a gigantic trade deficit
with the United States, our nationalists were complaining that we were
exporting capital to them.

There are a great many things you and I
agree upon, as we have all these years. There are a great many things you and
I agree upon, as we have all these years. We absolutely agree that "global
warming" is a crock. We agree that Europe should be paying the bills for our
imperial American legions — and if they don't want to pay, we should come
home. We agree that supply-side tax cuts should take precedence over paying
down the national debt. We agree that everything should be done to promote
entrepreneurial capitalism and nothing done to expand the level of corporate
socialism. We agree on the social and cultural issues. What we do not agree on
is the war, which I argue is over, and you argue is coming.

Explicitly
where we don't agree:

In your column, you complain of Nelson Mandela
meeting with Libya's Moamar Khadafy, suggesting the White House should have
stated: "Mr. Mandela has spent so much time in prison, he apparently needs the
occasional company of criminals." I think it proper that Mandela met with
Khadafy, just as I cheer the decision of Pope John Paul II to establish
diplomatic relations with Libya. I also agree with Khadafy that Scotland or
the International Court of Justice is the proper jurisdiction for the Libyans
accused to blowing up Pan Am 103, not the United States or Great Britain. We
should also recall that when President Reagan ordered the bombing of Tripoli,
it was on the assumption that Khadafy was responsible for the terrorism in
West Germany, and it was subsequently determined that Libya was not involved.
Khadafy does say bad things about the United States, but you would too if our
government ordered your assassination on hearsay evidence.

In your
column, you criticize France for doing a deal with Iran in defiance of U.S.
sanctions. I agree with France, on the grounds that Iran shows no signs of
harming our national interest. The material they are importing for their
nuclear reactors indicate the reactors are not of the type that can be made
into nuclear weapons. Iran belongs to the non-proliferation treaty. Its people
have just elected a moderate who wants to get on our good side. France, Russia
and most everyone else knows this. Why doesn't Pat Buchanan? You should be
screaming about us losing business in Iran because of obsolete information
about the Ayatollah and hostages way back when.

In your column, you
denounce Canada for doing business with Cuba in violation of our sanctions on
Castro. I agree with Canada. I also agree with the Pope, who has heard on
Vatican radio that the Cold War is over, and that Fidel is trying to find an
honorable way of admitting he was on the losing team.

In your column,
you complain that we are aiding Mexico even though it also flaunts our
sanctions against Cuba. I agree with Mexico, as I do with Canada. And you and
I were shoulder-to-shoulder in arguing that our government and the IMF caused
the peso problem in Mexico. You forgot about that, or you would not be so
quick to criticize Mexico.

In your column, you criticize Japan for
"ignoring countless U.S. protests and pushing exports to run up its annual
trade surplus." This is another crock. Japan's trade surplus has been
expanding because they have been following the disastrous advice of
Bob Rubin and our Treasury Department, trying to please us. They are in the
deepest recession of any industrial country, getting deeper all the time,
which means they can't afford to buy stuff from us, and must unload their
production on the world market in fire sales, in order to pay their creditors.
Who is advising you on international money and banking, Patrick?

In
your column, you argue that China recently arrested a Catholic bishop, and
this is a clear sign of the religious persecution of Catholics in China. You
know as well as I do that the Catholic bishop in question deliberately broke
the rules by which China attempts to regulate all religion in order to
minimize the political activities of religious leaders. I think you also
know that religious freedom in China has been steadily improving for the past
20 years. Bill McGurn, formerly Washington Bureau chief of the National
Review, has written recently on the marked improvement he has observed in
recent years as a Catholic in China.

In your column, you criticize
Saudi Arabia for dragging its feet on the FBI "I investigation of the deaths
of American servicemen in the Khobar Towers massacre. This sounds pretty weak.
You may be right, but with no other information, this citation does not
contribute much to your thesis.

In your column, you complain that
Israel sold fighter technology to China, even though Israel gets aid from us.
This is extremely weak, as it suggests Israel does not view China as the
mortal threat you suggest it may be.

In your column, you note that as
soon as we agreed to a NATO defense of Poland, the Czech Republic, and
Hungary, and France declared she would pay none of the cost of NATO expansion.
"Other NATO nations echoed Paris." Now here we agree. But my reason is that I
believe if we concentrate on a foreign policy that attempts to advance the
vision of a world of friendly nations, all happily trading in peace and
harmony, there will be no need for NATO expansion or for NATO.

Calm
down. Take a deep breath. Things aren't so bad. If you put your intellectual
energies where there are problems instead of where there are not, you would
once again be a serious factor in moving the world in the right
direction.